After graduating several tall seniors in 2012, this season was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Troy boys basketball team.

Only one senior, and one player with any significant varsity experience, returned for the Trojans.

The team still was able to earn eight wins and second place in conference, despite its tallest player just scraping 6-foot, 4-inches.

“In the preseason, I thought if we could win around half our games that would be a good year,” said Head Coach Cory Andersen. “But with some of our deficiencies, we actually overachieved.”

Andersen told The Western News in the preseason that the season was aiming to win more games than it lost. At 8-14, Troy missed this goal, but gained valuable experience for next season.

Those 14 losses include three to Bigfork, two to Class A Libby, two to Stillwater Christian, two to Mission and, strangely, two to Class C Noxon. The only unexpected losses were to Ronan and the two playoff losses to Deer Lodge and Eureka. 

The young team now has a varsity season under its belt and graduates one senior, Austin Grable.

Grable is a 3-point specialist for Troy, and was foisted into a leadership position.

“Right away, you become one of the leaders on the team,” Grable said. “I was looked up to like I looked up to last year’s seniors. But I’m not that good at explaining stuff.”

Grable said his team had individual talent, but failed to mesh well as a team. This perhaps is what cost the team winnable games in the playoffs.

Andersen has high hopes for next season.

“The promise for next year is very good,” he said. “We’ll be looking around eight deep.”

Those eight: Gabe Hickman, Bruce Metz, Nathan Olds, Gage Tallmadge, Ryan Huffman, Sean Opland, Luke Haggerty, and Erich Tallmadge.